Maksymov Studios

Seattle · University District

Renovating a University District house.

Two houses in the U District in one year: a kitchen opened to the dining room, and a whole-house restoration taken back to the studs.

A University District kitchen with white oak cabinets, black lower units and a dark stone island
University District/Kitchen and dining renovation/2025

The U District has the best bones and the worst floor plans in Seattle.

Big early-century houses, high ceilings, real millwork, and a century of small decisions on top: a kitchen cut off behind two doors, a bathroom added in a closet, a room divided when the house was let by the room. Almost every project here is a subtraction before it is an addition.

The kitchen where a wall came out.

Green zellige laid to the ceiling behind the range, white oak wall cabinets, and a dark stone island standing exactly where a load-bearing wall used to be. That is a beam, an engineer and a permit, and it is the reason the room now runs from the hall to the window in one move.

See the kitchen

Both University District houses

The wall came out and the island took its place
The window seat, painted the same green as the cabinets
The opening cut through from the hall, framed in the same oak
The whole kitchen, with the table where the wall used to be
The island runs the length of what used to be the dividing wall
Checkerboard marble on the floor, laid on the diagonal
The hood disappears into the oak rather than sitting on it
Painted in place, not sprayed in a factory
Zellige to the ceiling, and a pot filler so the pans never cross the room full
Green paint, brass handles, and open shelves instead of wall units
Blue and white behind the range, laid by hand
The pantry: the coffee machine lives inside it
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And the house next door to it in spirit: a full restoration.

Green painted cabinetry with brass cup pulls, blue and white patterned tile behind the range, a checkerboard marble floor and a copper roll-top bath upstairs. A period house given back its period, with the wiring and the pipes of a house built this year.

See the restoration
A period kitchen with green painted cabinetry, patterned tile and a checkerboard marble floor
Period, done properly
A copper roll-top bath on a patterned tiled floor beside a tiled shower
Copper roll-top, new everything behind it

What a U District house asks of you

  1. 01

    A panel that was never meant for this

    Knob-and-tube, early aluminum and a service size from another era. In a whole-house project this is not a surprise, it is a line item.

  2. 02

    Galvanized pipe, silted from the inside

    You feel it as pressure and see it as rust. The renovation is the cheapest moment in thirty years to replace the lot.

  3. 03

    Work somebody did in 1978

    Divided rooms, a bathroom in a closet, a doorway framed into a wall that was holding something up. Undoing it is most of the drawing time.

  4. 04

    Millwork worth matching

    The original trim is usually better than anything you can buy. We mill to match it rather than around it, which is the whole reason we have a shop.

Ten minutes down Eastlake there is a studio with the drawings and the samples in it.

920 Dexter Ave N, Monday to Friday. Most U District projects start with a floor plan on the table and an honest conversation about which walls are structural.

Start in U DistrictWhole-house work